Ken Mingis
Executive Editor

All about Android upgrades (and why they’re late) | TECH(talk)

news analysis
Feb 14, 20192 mins
AndroidSecuritySmartphones

The release of a new version of Android always causes a hopeful stir among users. So why does it take so long for device makers to roll them out?

Android robot and gears emerging from isometric mobile phone screen
Credit: cenkerdem / Getty Images

It’s not exactly news that Android upgrades almost always take a lo-o-o-o-o-ng time to roll out to most users. As in months. Often, many months. Sometimes more than a year.

Sometimes never.

(There is an exception: Google delivers new versions of Android to its Pixel line right away, and did just that with the release of Android 9.0 (Pie) last fall.)

It’s now been six months since Pie arrived, which means it’s time for Computerworld blogger JR Raphael’s comprehensive look at how device-makers are doing when it comes to upgrades. 

Raphael joined Computerworld Executive Editor Ken Mingis to go over the findings, as well as discuss how Google’s Project Treble is working. Treble is the company’s answer to slow update rollouts; it’s designed to streamline the process as much as possible to help the hardware folks push out updates quickly.

(Spoiler: Project Treble doesn’t seem to have helped much.)

Raphael then rounds out the discussion with insights into why Android upgrades are so important

For an audio-only version of this episode, click play (or catch up on all earlier episodes) below. Or you can find us on iTunes or Pocket Casts, where you can download each episode and listen at your leisure.

Happy listening, and please, send feedback or suggestions for future topics to us. We’d love to hear from you.

Ken Mingis

Ken Mingis, Executive Editor at Computerworld, is an award-winning journalist who has overseen coverage of enterprise technology issues at Computerworld for more than two decades. Before his move to Computerworld, he was a reporter at the Providence Journal and online news editor at the Boston Globe’s Boston.com. In his role as an editor at Foundry (and before that IDG), he has been recognized by the American Association of Business Publication Editors and is a Jesse H. Neal Awards winner for outstanding business journalism. In addition to his editing work, he has appeared in a variety of podcasts including Foundry’s Today In Tech and the β€œMingis on Tech” video series. He is a Raleigh, NC native, from where he now remotely oversees the day-to-day operation of, and strategic planning for, our website.

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